Page 12 of A Lesson in Forbidden Love

“Lady Cecilia.”

“I — I was just going up to —”

“Of course.”

Cecilia, to her credit, did not pretend to a composure she did not have. She gathered her skirts and went past Madeleine up the stairs with the haste of a girl who has been caught out in her own drawing room and knows it. Madeleine did not turn to watch her go.

The Dowager Marchioness was waiting in the doorway.

She was a small woman, smaller than Madeleine had expected, with steel grey hair dressed very plainly and a black silk gown of the sort that a widow wore when she had decided that mourning was a permanent condition rather than a passing one. Her face was finely lined, her mouth thin, her eyes pale and quick. She inclined her head the precise distance one inclined it to a Governess, and stood aside to let Madeleine in.

“Miss Wharton. Pray come in. Sit there, if you please.”

Madeleine sat where she was bid. She did not arrange her face into anything; she let it be what it was, which was tired and very steady. The Dowager closed the door. She did not sit at once. She went instead to the window, drew aside the curtain by half an inch, looked out into the square as though she expected to find something there, and then let the curtain fall.

“I had not understood,” she said, without turning, “that you were Henry Wharton, Viscount Penworthy’s, daughter.”

“I am, ma’am.”

“My son did not see fit to tell me.”

“I cannot speak to his Lordship’s reasons, ma’am.”

“No. I imagine you cannot.” The Dowager turned at last. Her eyes were not unkind, Madeleine thought, but they were not warm either; they were the eyes of a woman who had been managing a great house and a great name for forty years and had not been surprised by anything in a long time. “Your father, Miss Wharton, was acquainted with my late husband. They were not friends, but they were civil. I met your mother once, at — I forget where. She struck me as a sensible woman.”

“She was, ma’am.”

“And she is —?”

“Near two years dead, ma’am. Two autumns after my father.”

The Dowager inclined her head a second time. There was, Madeleine thought, a fractional softening at the corner of her mouth — the briefest acknowledgement, between women who had buried their dead, that some things did not need to be said aloud.

“You have two sisters, I believe.”

“Beatrice, ma’am, who is six-and-twenty and resides with our aunt in Bath. And Georgiana, who is four-and-twenty and is at present companion to a Mrs Verity in Hampshire.”

“Neither married.”

“Neither married, ma’am.”

“And you,” said the Dowager, in the same level tone, “are two-and-twenty.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

A small pause. The Dowager moved at last from the window, and seated herself opposite Madeleine in a high-backed chair upholstered in the same pale-yellow silk as the walls. She arranged her hands on the arms of it with the precision of a woman seating herself on a throne.

“I shall be plain with you, Miss Wharton, because I do not think that indirection serves either of us. I should not have engaged you, had I known. Not for any objection to your person — I have no objection to your person; I have only just met you. But your name is a name that was much spoken of four years ago, and not kindly, and a Governess in this house must be a woman whose name is not spoken of at all.”

“I understand, ma’am.”

“Do you?”

“I do, ma’am. I have understood it for four years.”

The pale eyes rested on her, and Madeleine met them, and did not look down.

“My son,” said the Dowager at length, “believes you are suited to my daughter. He is, on the whole, a good judge of character, though he is occasionally a poor judge of consequence. I am inclined, in this instance, to defer to him — provisionally. You will stay. You will be discreet. You will, I trust, not give me cause to revisit the matter.”